Chapter seventeen

A snowplow led the funeral procession, a crushed mailbox clinging to the blade like an oversized tuna can. This struck Rowe as a uniquely Maine touch. Likewise the organ pipes of ice suspended from the cliffs and the opaline reflections on the pale winter sea. Distant islands and vessels seemed woven of the same liquid material, shimmering mirage-like on the limitless horizon.

A startling number of vehicles joined the cortege as they proceeded along the eighty-mile route to the Evergreen cemetery in Portland. Rowe drove her Lexus, with Phoebe in the backseat next to one of the androids the CIA insisted on supplying. His colleague was glued to her back bumper in a black Ford with extremely dark tinted windows. Very funereal. In front of her, the hearse carried Juliet in her elegant blond oak coffin, and trailing behind were Dwayne and Earl, who had tied lavish black bows to the door handles of Dwayne’s decrepit car.

Several members of the MPRA had muscled in on the highly publicized proceedings. They were followed by the entire O’Halloran clan, now local celebrities after staging a mock trial for Thomas Baker and hanging him in effigy, complete with the sack over his head and a preacher reading from Leviticus.

The press had shown up in force for the church service in Camden and already had their cameras set up around the grave site when the procession arrived. There was nothing else happening on the Midcoast at this time of year, other than motor vehicle accidents and the occasional pothead protest outside the Rockland town hall.

The remarkable weather wouldn’t hold, Rowe decided, as they left their cars at the frozen duck pond and straggled along a sloping serpentine path to Juliet’s grave. For now, the sky was a limpid blue and the snow glittered crystalline white in the early afternoon sun. It was too soon for spring, and hard to believe there would ever be a summer, but today a hint of thaw tinted the air. Rowe tightened her grip on Phoebe’s hand and wondered how she could have imagined herself alive before this woman upended her world.

As the funeral directors transported the coffin to the grave, she felt strangely moved, as if she had known Juliet and cared for her. After some angst, they had decided to bury her in the existing plot. The headstone had been ripped up when Becky O’Halloran’s body was exhumed, and Phoebe had settled on a more fitting monument, which included the names of Juliet’s descendents.

Cara thought she’d gone overboard, with the angel leaning against the side of the tall headstone, a tiny fawn curled at her feet. But Rowe had made no attempt to talk her out of it. Juliet’s diary was littered with sketches of deer. Her new epitaph had also been drawn from her personal notes:
When I look out into God’s infinity,

and know I am also His work, my soul rejoices.
“I hope she likes it,” Phoebe whispered in Rowe’s ear.

“I’m sure she will.”

“The service was nice. I liked the Emily Dickinson reading you chose.”

“I hope Cara wasn’t disappointed.” Phoebe’s twin had suggested some lyrics from a Patti Smith song, but Rowe thought she should run with something more in step with Juliet’s period.

“She didn’t mind.” A wistful note entered Phoebe’s voice. “I wish she would talk to me.”

“I thought things were better between you.”

“They are, but she’s…closed me out. I can’t explain it. I even wrote that letter to Bev. But she didn’t care.”

Rowe had sensed Cara’s distance, too. Since her return from L.A., she’d been friendly and charming. And she had stopped hitting on Rowe, thankfully. But she seemed to be brooding. Even escalating DVD sales for her work didn’t thrill her. The one thing that perked her up was a phone message last week from someone called Fran. This had prompted her immediate departure from the house, and she didn’t show up again for several days. Since then, she’d been on her cell phone for four hours talking to the mystery woman, but she refused to answer any questions about her.

Phoebe was beside herself with curiosity, and her nose was out of joint. She was convinced Cara had a girlfriend. A real one, not a sex toy like most of them. It bothered her endlessly that the girlfriend must live in the area but Cara had not introduced her.

Rowe cast a glance around the mourners. Cara had brought her own car and had somehow ended up miles back in the procession after they left Camden. Spotting a dark head, Rowe waved, and Cara emerged from the O’Halloran throng with an athletic young woman at her side.

Rowe elbowed Phoebe gently. “I have a feeling your sister wants you to meet someone.”

She heard a soft, quick breath and Phoebe said, “Wow. She never brings anyone home.”

Rowe lowered her gaze to the piled-up snow around the yawning grave. “We’re not exactly home.”

“You know what I mean. I never meet any of them. Oh, God. I hope she likes me.”

“Don’t stare, baby.”

Phoebe tucked her arm into Rowe’s and said urgently, “Shall I invite her for dinner?”

“How about we leave that for Cara to do in her own time?”

Phoebe beamed. “If she’s met someone local, she won’t want to leave.”

Rowe sighed. She couldn’t blame Cara for wanting to make her own life somewhere else. It seemed inevitable, now that Phoebe was settling down and wouldn’t need so much from her. All the same, it was going to be rough if she left Islesboro.

“She looks friendly,” Phoebe murmured.

Rowe waited for Cara’s companion to spot Phoebe and react like a fool. Instead the woman broke into a broad, genuine smile.

“Hey, you must be Phoebe,” she said. “I’m Fran. Cara says you play mahjong with my grandma, Dotty Prescott.”

“You’re not the granddaughter who tampers with the cogs of justice?”

“At your service,” Fran said.

Cara looked on like butter wouldn’t melt. “We’re dating,” she said. “Nothing serious. Just hooking up while Fran’s in town.”

Startled that Cara would make such a dismissive announcement in front of her girlfriend, Rowe shook Fran’s hand and said, “I’m Rowe. Phoebe’s partner. How long are here for?”

“Until Cara’s done with me, I guess.” She seemed good-humored about Cara’s admission, even self-satisfied.

Rowe intercepted a disconcerted stare from Phoebe and said, “Well, it’s great to meet you, Fran. I hope we’ll see some more of you.”

“I’m working on it,” Fran said. This time the disconcerted look came from Cara.

The priest undid his greatcoat so that everyone could see he was the guy in charge and declared in a voice too squeaky for his impressive robes, “We gather today to say good-bye and to thank God for a life.”

Rowe bent her head like everyone else. Only she thanked God she had picked the right twin.

“Are you serious? They found the materials for a dirty bomb exactly where you saw them?”

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” Phoebe said. “But I don’t want to have to hide half my life from you.”

Rowe gazed down at the head on her shoulder. “I can keep my mouth shut.”

“I know.” Phoebe tilted her head and found Rowe’s lips, planting a delicate kiss. Her hair spilled in a dark wave across the bedding. Moonlight played across her features. Bright, liquid eyes held Rowe’s. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. I nearly died without you.”

Phoebe was still upset over that incident. She’d been mortified when Rowe told her what had happened that night, and seemed to blame herself for not warning Rowe to stay away from the cottage. Juliet’s ghost hadn’t meant her any harm. Rowe understood that now. She had simply wanted to destroy the kitchen so her body would be found and finally laid to rest.

Not wanting Phoebe to dwell on her imagined shortcomings, Rowe changed tack. “Are those CIA gorillas going to hang around here forever?”

“That’s the compromise. I get to live at home and work for Vernell half the time, but I have to have round-the-clock security.” A note of anxiety entered Phoebe’s voice. “Can you stand it?”

“So long as they don’t sleep in the bedroom.”

“Cara says she’s going to talk some sense into Marvin Perry. It’s ridiculous to impose on our privacy like this.”

Rowe called to mind Perry’s serene hired-killer face and said, “I don’t think much of her chances.”

“She says she might buy that place she saw in L.A.” Phoebe’s tone was burdened with emotion.

“I have a better idea.” Rowe rolled onto her side and took Phoebe’s face in her hands, knowing what it meant to her to have her twin close by. “Why don’t you move into the cottage with me. Cara can keep right on living here, and you and she can walk across the meadow whenever you want to see one another.”

“Really? You’re okay about living there…after everything that happened?”

Rowe thought about it. Somehow it seemed fitting that Juliet’s great-great-granddaughter should live in Dark Harbor Cottage. Juliet had reached out to Phoebe, needing to free herself of guilt and sorrow. There was no escaping that the cottage had been the scene of terrible suffering. But Rowe had a sense that bringing happiness to its four walls would be part of setting Juliet free. Already when she walked through the front door, the air seemed lighter.

“I want to live there with you, darling,” she told Phoebe.

Her lover smiled. “We’ll build a beautiful garden where the kitchen was, so there’s nothing left of that…ugliness.” A tear spilled onto her cheek, glistening in the silvery light. “I can’t believe he did that to his own daughter.”

“I know.”

Rowe contemplated the horrible facts the forensic pathologist had reported. Juliet had been stabbed at least three times but had not died of her wounds. In pain and probably feverish with infection, she had died of dehydration and cold after days spent beating and scratching on the walls of her tomb. Her fingernails were broken and the bones of her hands damaged. She had bound her wounds by tearing strips from the nightgown she was wearing. These makeshift bandages were found with her remains, stained with blood from which her DNA had been sampled and matched to that of the twins.

From her own research, Rowe had learned that Thomas Baker returned to New York with his invalid wife as soon as the snow melted. He had kept the cottage closed up for almost twenty years. It was sold when he lost most of his money in the crash of 1929. None of the subsequent owners lived there very long, and eventually the cottage was rented out as a summer home for many years. Its resident ghost was considered a drawing card by the leasing agents.

“Poor Juliet.” Phoebe twisted the pearl on its black ribbon. She had been wearing it to bed of late, telling Rowe she wanted Juliet to know she was remembered. “She told me what happened.”

Rowe had suspected as much, but she’d figured Phoebe would tell her when she was ready. “Was that what woke you up a few nights ago?”

“Yes. It was horrible.”

“I’m sorry, baby. We don’t have to talk about it—”

“No. I want to. She heard them in the kitchen and came downstairs. Her father was beating Becky. He caught her burning the sheets from the birth. The cook’s husband told on them after Becky rejected his advances.”

Rowe could just imagine how that played out. A senior servant foolishly tells her husband the girls’ secret. This asshole sees an opportunity for himself and when he’s knocked back, he takes his revenge, at the same time currying favor with the master of the house. The same story must have played itself out time and again in those days, and it was always the woman who bore the consequences.

Becky loved Juliet, Rowe decided, maybe she was even in love with her mistress—she had tried to protect her in every way she could. With increasing sorrow, she listened as Phoebe described the way the murders went down. Juliet, weak from childbirth, had tried to drag her father off Becky. She located a carving knife and ordered him to leave the maid alone.

“Becky told the cook about the pearl, you see,” Phoebe said. “She didn’t want anyone thinking Juliet abandoned her baby with nothing.”

“Don’t tell me.” It was all falling into place, another story of men’s greed, lust and amorality. “The cook’s husband told Baker a different story.”

“Juliet said her father had a foul temper. Mrs. Baker was an invalid because he threw her down a flight of stairs one day.”

Rowe sighed. “No wonder she was terrified of him finding out she was pregnant.”

“He wrestled with her,” Phoebe said. “That was when Juliet screamed for Becky to run.”

The scream Phoebe had heard the day she ran from the kitchen and gave Rowe her black eye. It all made sense now.

“In the end he got a hold of the knife and stabbed her. Then he left her bleeding on the kitchen floor and went after Becky.” Phoebe wiped a hand across her eyes. Shoulders shaking, she said, “Juliet dragged herself into the pantry to hide, and after a while he came back. He was raving about how Becky would tell him what he wanted to know. He emptied the provisions from the pantry and nailed boards over it. By the time he was done, it was almost dawn and Becky was dead.”

“So he went out and untied her hands and feet,” Rowe said numbly. She knew the rest. “He made it look like an accident.”

“He actually had the presence of mind to dress her in one of Juliet’s gowns and tie a lace cap over her head.” Phoebe’s voice dripped bitter contempt. “When the doctor arrived he played the grieving father. He sent the servants home, supposedly for a day of mourning, and personally bricked up the pantry.”

Rowe could hardly bear to imagine. “I hope he rots in hell.”

“I’m not sure if there is a hell,” Phoebe whispered.

“Don’t go looking, okay?”

She felt Phoebe smile. “Okay.”

“Thank you for telling me what happened.”

Phoebe cuddled closer, her wet eyelashes painting Rowe’s cheek. After some time had passed, she murmured, “Juliet’s still here. I’m not sure why.”

“The banishment didn’t work?” Rowe was dismayed. After the funeral, they’d performed cleansing rituals and summoned Juliet. They invited her to let go and rest in peace, the CIA guys impassively looking on like they saw the paranormal every day.

“Don’t worry,” Phoebe said drowsily. “If she gets antsy, I’ll talk to her. I think she likes me.”

My lover has friends on the other side, Rowe thought. And she’s a top-secret CIA asset with security guards who have instructions to kill anyone who lays a hand on her. At least, that’s how it seemed from the paranoid way they behaved. Then there was Marvin Perry. They didn’t come any scarier than that guy. And he and Vernell were having some kind of pissing contest over who would get to play with Phoebe next. It was stranger than fiction.

Rowe stroked Phoebe’s hair and kissed her forehead, feeling her limbs grow heavy as she sank into sleep. “I love you, baby,” she whispered, overwhelmed with her good fortune.

Life had taken a very odd turn, but Rowe knew in her bones she was finally on the right track again. Maybe Phoebe was right. Maybe she had never left it and everything had happened for a reason. It had taken a lot of disappointment and disillusion to drive her from Manhattan to Maine. Had she stayed where she was, licking her self-inflicted wounds, she would never have met Phoebe.

She listened to the soft sounds of the house and discerned that one of them was the sound of whichever CIA man had pulled the graveyard shift. He was standing at the bedroom door, she realized, disconcerted. Muffled voices penetrated the solid wood, then a female figure entered the room.

“Cara,” Rowe whispered in surprise.

Phoebe’s twin crept over to the bed. “Is she asleep?”

“I think so. Is something wrong?”

Cara dawdled around the bed to Rowe. “I couldn’t sleep. There’s something I want to say.” She hesitated. “If you’d prefer, we can talk tomorrow.”

Rowe felt awkward, detecting an uncharacteristic vulnerability in Cara. Taking a guess at what was troubling her, she said, “Cara, I can’t ever take your place and I’m not trying to.”

Cara wrapped her robe more firmly around her, hugging herself against the cold. “Am I that obvious?”

“I know this isn’t easy for either of you. Phoebe’s terrified that you’re going to leave.”

She glanced down at her lover, concerned they might have woken her. But Phoebe was serenely unawares. It always amazed Rowe how quickly and deeply sleep claimed her. Phoebe had said it was like leaving one world and entering another and that sometimes she was afraid she wouldn’t find her way back.

“I don’t want to leave,” Cara said. “But I want to be fair to the two of you. If I’m here, I think things could get kind of crowded. Don’t you?” She reached across Rowe and stroked her sister’s hair. “It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I feel like we can never be completely ourselves. It’s like I don’t know where she begins and I end.”

“I’m not sure you can fight that,” Rowe said. “Please don’t try on my account.”

Cara tilted her head slightly to one side and stroked her bottom lip with a finger. The unconscious gesture jolted Rowe. Phoebe did exactly the same thing when she was struggling with a thought.

“You’re a rarity,” Cara said. “Most women would be jealous. Christ, I would.”

Rowe took careful measure of herself. Was she being honest with herself, suggesting Cara stay? Or was she being noble, trying to give Phoebe what she wanted without regard to her own feelings? She couldn’t afford to kid herself about this important issue, only to be filled with resentment after the fact.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have found Phoebe,” she said with increasing confidence in her own perspective. “I love her. I love who she is. And you are so profoundly a part of her that to deny it, to try and carve you away, would harm her. It would change her, and I couldn’t bear that. Do you see?”

“Yes. I see exactly.” Cara smiled gravely and padded across to the window. She drew the curtains back and gazed out into the night. Cast in silhouette by the silver radiance of the moon, she stood still as a sylph watching her own reflection in a pool.

That’s how it was for them, Rowe mused. The Temple twins were mirror images. In order to see herself, each would have to find some way to look beyond her twin. Denying their bond was not the answer.

“Cara,” she called softly. “Come sleep with your sister.”

For a few fraught seconds Cara stared at Rowe, then, without a word, she closed the curtains and crossed to Phoebe’s side of the bed, slipping beneath the covers to lie next to her. Phoebe stirred slightly and Rowe felt her move to wrap an arm around her twin’s middle.

It struck her then that love is a tree with complex roots and boughs broad enough to shelter many. Its fruits are diverse, yet each draws its nourishment from the same source. None steals from another. Phoebe’s love for Rowe did not demand the sacrifice of her love for Cara, and Rowe would never ask it.

She kissed the top of her darling’s head and smiled to herself. A few months ago she would have found this situation very weird. Even now, if she really thought about it… Yep. It was weird all right. She was in bed with twins, and was madly in love with one of them, having occasionally lusted after the other. Since moving to Maine, most of her fondly held beliefs about life, love, and the universe had gone right out the door. If all this could happen in a matter of weeks, who knew what the future might hold? Anything seemed possible.

Rowe made herself a promise. Tomorrow, she would wake up and begin a new life and a new novel. It was time.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14